To See With The Eyes of Faith

There are many voices in the world today that question faith in God, or that ridicule it. And it is not unusual to hear the whisper of doubt in our own minds, particularly when we are undergoing some rough patches of one kind or another. There are, I suppose, many reasons for this including fears of various kinds, laziness, and anger among them. But pride is the reason for many of the more cynical attacks on faith. In reality, faith isn’t supposed to be easy. Nothing really worth having is.

Let me share a little story about faith to demonstrate what I mean. It’s a little, parable-like tale I found in a book called, “Maktub”, by Paulo Coelho.

How many times have we been blessed by God’s generous grace and not seen it? If so, might that be because we have been caught up, temporarily, in our own prideful attitudes, or our own limited ways of thinking? Remember what the opening lines of the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us about faith: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” To have faith is to have a certain confidence in the future that is based on trust in God’s promises to us. Such an attitude can only arise out of a personal relationship with God. That relationship, like any of our human relationships, is the result of the hard work.

We form a relationship with God by deepening our prayer life, by consciously carving out some time every day to spend time with Him, as we would with our dearest friends. We hear his words to us by reading and reflecting on the scriptures with attentiveness, really “listening” to them, and taking them into the intimate spaces of our own hearts and minds. Faith, like any relationship, is not just a thought or a word. Such a precious, infinitely important thing, in order to be real, must surely be demonstrated by how we live with and for one another. Our faith is revealed in our actions and in the quality and nature of our words. Faith is not a mere statement though; it’s a commitment, it’s a way of living.

To see with the eyes of faith gives us the courage to live that faith openly in the midst of our times; times that are often either indifferent to faith, or that harbor deep animosity towards it. And we can trust and have faith in God because we have evidence of God’s unconditional love for us. It was shown to us in real time, in real history, openly, in the person of Jesus Christ through his life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection.

Some questions to meditate on then: Am I committed to the hard work of building my relationship with Jesus by deepening my prayer life? Do others see reason for my faith in how I live my life with and for them? Am I willing to bear the burden of his “stones” like the pious knight in the story above? Do I trust that there are diamonds, even though I don’t see them now?